Religion: Evolution in Spain

When General Francisco Franco and his Nationalists rose in revolution against the Spanish Republic in 1936, many Roman Catholics in Spain welcomed the general as a liberator. The Catholic Church had been badly battered from the left in the turmoil that led up to the civil war: property had been confiscated, parochial schools outlawed, churches and convents burned. After Franco consolidated his power, he put clergy in the pay of the state —a status they had lost under the Republic. The church readily agreed to restore to Franco an old privilege of Spanish monarchs—a virtual veto over the appointment of Spanish bishops.

Today, that comfortable alliance is breaking up. The church, in fact, has asserted a startling new independence from the Franco regime. Last fall, at a meeting of the National Conference of Bishops and Priests in Madrid, more than half of the delegates approved a resolution apologizing for the church's role in the civil war ("We did not always know how to be true ministers of reconciliation . . . [in] a civil war among brothers"). In December, the church's National Commission on Justice and Peace attacked the maintenance of public order by "force and repression." In January, when he took office as the new Archbishop of Madrid-Alcala, Spain's Vicente Cardinal Enrique y Tarancon, 64—himself the son of a working-class family—pointedly pledged that he was the "spokesman for those who have no voice to defend their legitimate aspirations—the poor."

New Blood. The new church-state relationship reflects broader changes in Catholicism itself—changes that have swept away the feudal image of the Spanish church that persisted from the days of Philip II. Gone, except on the grandest feast days, are the somber rows of mantillas that once filled cathedral pews. In their place are bare heads, wispy dresses, blue jeans, even miniskirts. As in other Roman Catholic churches around the world, the liturgy has been modernized. Women and children now pass collection plates. Worshipers sometimes help themselves to the Communion host. Guitars and drums accompany new Spanish hymns set to such internationally recognized tunes as Michael, Row the Boat Ashore and Blowin' in the Wind.

Above all, the Spanish clergy and hierarchy have changed. Vatican attitudes toward the church's posture in Spain began to shift during the reign of Pope John XXIII, particularly in the liberal climate created by his Second Vatican Council. Then, in 1967, Pope Paul VI named Italian Archbishop Luigi Dadaglio as Apostolic Nuncio—papal ambassador—to Spain. Dadaglio arrived in Madrid with a virtual mandate to bring new blood into the Spanish hierarchy. With an assist from Franco's able ambassador to the Holy See, former Washington Envoy Antonio Garrigues y Diaz Canabate, Dadaglio engineered the appointment or advancement of more than 30 Spanish bishops, the majority of them liberals. Franco, yielding to his progressive man in the Vatican (and some sympathizers in his ministries), accepted the choices. The appointees include nearly all of Spain's leading episcopal reformers today, among them Cardinal Tarancon. In all, two-thirds of Spanish churchmen may now be considered reformist.